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Monday, 14 January 2013

Holyrood Abbey Church

The complicated history of Holyrood Abbey Church is commensurate with the many schisms and mergers in
the Scottish protestant churches between the mid-19th century and
1929, when this parish was gathered back into the Church of Scotland, which
denomination it now retains, although it seems even now to display a little
more evangelical zeal than you’d encounter among its Auld Kirk counterparts that
never left the fold.

The theme of the service was the Holy Spirit, with readings
from John 14 and 16 (NIV Bible), and with hymns to match, some of which were
old chestnuts (Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty) with yous where the thous
and thees used to be, and others I’d never heard before.

The minister kept his mic on during all the hymns, so his
voice boomed above all others making the two female vocalists up on the dais completely
inaudible. The flute was badly out of tune, but the violin, cello and piano
made a pretty good fist of the music and most of the congregation joined in. It
was also nice to hear Ebenezer, one of my favourite hymn tunes, being played on
the piano as we first came into the church.

“How long will the sermon series on the Holy Spirit last?”,
Rev Hair had been asked. He didn’t know, but would be led by the Spirit. This
was the first instalment: Meet the Holy Spirit. It would not be a theological
treatise, he promised – far from it! Instead it would be about personal
experience of the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.

I’m always slightly suspicious of a clergyman who doesn’t
want to talk about theology. The theology’s the best bit! But Rev Hair was
earnest and talked well, although he needs to brush up on his Star Wars
analogies; I’m no film buff, but I’m sure the hero’s name wasn’t Luke Skywater.
Perhaps it was merely a slip of the tongue, but his point was that the Holy
Spirit is more than just a force. It, or more correctly He, is a person just
like Jesus but whose presence serves to illuminate Jesus in such a way that we
often overlook the source of that light. Do we look at the floodlights when
Edinburgh Castle’s lit up? No, we look at the castle itself, but without the
floodlights we wouldn’t see its majesty so clearly.

This was solid Church of Scotland territory and much as I’d
expected it to be, although I was slightly disconcerted by the claim, not by
Rev Hair but by another prayer leader, that God is desperate to hear from us. Desperation
isn’t something we generally associate with omnipotence. It suggests a craven,
needy deity who somehow depends on us for validation. Or did I read too much
into an ill-judged choice of vocabulary?